1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a separation paper insertion printing processing method and apparatus and, more particularly, to a separation paper insertion printing processing method and apparatus in a system having a printer and an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is conventionally known a printing control method having a separation paper insertion function. According to this separation paper insertion function, when a system having a printer and an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer is to print data on media such as OHP films for which it is undesirable that output results overlap each other, the system prints data while inserting separation paper, which functions to prevent the output results from overlapping each other and also functions as layout paper or anti-offset paper.
Depending on settings, the same contents as those of a corresponding OHP film can be printed on separation paper, or separation paper can be output as blank paper.
Also, there is a printing control method having a blank paper saving function of saving paper by not printing pages having no print data.
However, the printing control method having the conventional separation paper insertion function does not consider any output order of prints. Thus, even if a printer system can perform backward printing (start printing data from the final page) considering face-up discharge printing, it cannot select whether to print separation paper before or after an output page of a corresponding OHP film.
The conventional blank paper saving function may be used together with the separation paper insertion function. In this case, however, when an output page having no print data exists such that separation paper is set not to be printed by the separation paper insertion function, the blank paper saving function is effected not to allow normal separation paper insertion printing.
The present invention has been made to overcome the conventional drawbacks, and has as its object to provide a printing control method capable of normally inserting separation paper regardless of a designated printing order.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a printing control method capable of normally inserting separation paper even when both the blank paper saving function and separation paper insertion function are used.